Chapter 5

Elara Thorne POV:

The headache that had been building all afternoon finally began to subside. I was in my assigned quarters, a simple but comfortable room in the Packhouse, trying to organize my notes from the border patrol.

A soft knock came at my door.

It was Leo Finch, a quiet, kind-faced wolf from the archives. He was holding a stack of historical pack treaties I had requested earlier.

"I found these for you," he said, his voice gentle. "Thought you might want them before the end of the day."

"Leo, thank you," I said, genuinely grateful. "You're a lifesaver. Come in, please. There's a section here I don't understand."

He stepped inside as I cleared a space on my small table. As we bent over the aging documents, a sudden, inexplicable chill washed over me. The hairs on my arms stood on end. It felt like I was being watched by something ancient and predatory. I pressed a hand to my chest, my heart suddenly racing.

Then, a whisper of a voice, faint as a dying breath but filled with a volcanic rage, echoed in the deepest corner of my mind.

*Who are you?*

I flinched, looking around the empty room. "Did you say something?" I asked Leo.

He looked up from the treaty, his brow furrowed in confusion. "No. Are you alright, Elara? You've gone pale."

Before I could answer, a spike of sharp, agonizing pain shot through my skull, as if a connection inside me had been violently ripped apart. A strangled gasp escaped my lips, and I swayed on my feet, the room tilting precariously.

"Elara!" Leo cried out, grabbing my arm to steady me. "What is it?"

The pain receded as quickly as it came, leaving a dull, throbbing ache and a profound sense of loss in its wake. I had no idea what had just happened.

Miles away, in his office, Kaelen Varg slammed his fist onto his mahogany desk. The connection he had just forged through the mate bond had been... tainted. He had reached out, only to be met with the scent of another male-an unmarked, unknown male-in his mate's private chambers.

His inner wolf was howling with a primal, possessive fury. *Another male! With our mate!*

The faint, confused thoughts he'd managed to pick up from her, her conversation with that other male, had been twisted by his rage into evidence of deceit. Betrayal.

The one thing he could not tolerate.

A gift box, small and elegantly wrapped, was knocked from the corner of his desk by the force of his blow. It fell to the floor, forgotten.

He would not summon her. He would not welcome a faithless, tainted she-wolf as the Luna of Nightfall.

He stormed from his office, his control shattering. In the courtyard, his human form gave way to that of a monstrous black dire wolf, its silver eyes burning with rage and humiliation. He launched himself toward the forest, a blur of black fur and fury, running to escape the betrayal that was tearing him apart from the inside out.

*My mate...* his silent, animalistic roar echoed through the woods. *She will never be my Luna!*